Game 3: Winning Start for Mr Young

Bristol v Downend, WEPL Premier 1, 19 May 2018
Bristol 281-7, J Bracey 147, W Young 48, B Gilmour 3-47
Downend 185, J Garrett 68, T Probert 3-35, L Shaw 3-44
Bristol won by 96 runs
Bristol’s firsts are off and running in their 2018 WEPL Premier 1 campaign, bouncing back from heavy defeats in their first two games to record a 20-point win against Downend at Failand.
After stand-in skipper Will Young won the toss and elected to bat, James Bracey compiled a chanceless 147 to guide Bristol to a score of 281, which comfortable exceeded what they had managed to accumulate in the two previous games combined. A resolute performance in the field brought home the victory, with Tommy Probert – bowling fast on his return from injury – and Louie Shaw, taking three wickets apiece.
Bracey played with great freedom, scoring nearly half his runs in boundaries – 18 of them in total – and apart from a leading edge in the first over that looped just out of mid-wicket’s reach, he hardly put a foot wrong in the rest of the 141 balls he faced. His first boundary came in Callum Gregory’s second over – the fourth of the innings – with a sort of one-handed fade behind point. In the same bowler’s next over, Bracey found the boundary four more times: an exquisite extra-cover drive to the longest boundary on the field, a splay over square cover, a guide wide of third man, and a cracking square drive to finish.
Meanwhile at the other end, Finn Trenouth was also getting in on the act, hitting a huge six into the tennis courts and a deft leg-glance for four into the wood off Craig Miles that both caused significant delays while the balls were retrieved. The pair raced to 67 in the ninth over when Trenouth was well caught by Jordan Garrett at third slip.
This brought Young to the wicket and he collected his first boundary with a text-book straight drive. Shortly afterwards the brothers Jackson replaced Miles and Gregory and a period of consolidation followed the end of the first powerplay. The scoring rate slowed from the heights of seven an over, but Young and Bracey maintained it at around fives throughout their partnership of 116, Bracey reaching his half-century off 52 balls.
Young was perhaps fortunate to survive a confident LBW appeal on 36, but he had progressed to 48 when he had a huge hoo-ha at Brandon Gilmour, who had replaced Phil Jackson from the far end, and gave a catch to mid-on.
Bristol subsided somewhat from 183-1 in the 34th over. Shaw was caught behind down the leg side off Currill, Kieran Noema-Barnett well caught on the cover boundary off the same bowler, Matt Brewer caught by a diving Phil Jackson at backward point off Brandon Gilmour, and Paul Redwood departing in a similar fashion this time caught at mid-on. None of these four reached double figures, but Bracey was continuing to progress. His second fifty took slightly longer than the first – 60 balls and he reached his century with a well-taken single. The hundred safely banked, he moved up a gear, taking thirteen of what proved to be Currill’s last over including a semi-ramp for four and three cover-drives for two, two and four. His last 47 runs came off just 29 balls.
Bracey’s departure in the 48th over to Phil Jackson’s third catch, this time at mid-wicket, was followed by some effective late-order welly from Probert, as Downed exceeded the allotted time to complete their overs by more than twenty minutes.
Bristol had a dream start when Noema-Barnett rearranged Nathan Roberts’ stumps in the first over, but his replacement, Sam Harper, played combatively, taking 14 from an Ashleigh Joyner over including two sixes behind square on the leg side and an off-driven four that made Vir Lakhani chase all the way to the rope. But Joyner seemed to get the measure of him thereafter and had him playing and missing repeatedly.
Noema-Barnett completed a miserly five over spell of 1-11 and was replaced by Probert who promptly dismissed Harper, caught by Trenouth at second slip diving to his left. Jordan Garrett at this stage had inched his way to 4 from 27 balls, but started to play more freely in combination with Callum Loud as the pair put on thirty in six overs before a second fine diving catch by Trenouth, this time at short mid-wicket off Shaw, dealt with the latter. Another dangerous partnership appeared to be developing between Gilmour and Garrett but again, Bristol managed to break it before it had really hurt them – Neil Pollard finding the edge and Bracey behind the stumps doing the rest.
It was the next wicket, thought, that of Garrett, that proved decisive. After his slow start, he had accelerated to 68 off 86 balls and had just deposited Lakhani over mid-wicket for six. He attempted to repeat the feat off the third ball of Shaw’s second spell, though, and was bowled.
From 151 for 5 in the 30th, Bristol wrapped things up in another eleven overs. Shaw was nearly decapitated by a bullet of a drive from Matt Jackson, but survived to dismiss him two balls later, caught by Young at long on. A few overs earlier, Probert had got through Miles’s defences and a couple of overs after a direct hit from Matt Brewer effected the run out of Joe Dryell. Lakhani dropped a sitter from Gregory, to deny Shaw a fourth wicket, then returned to pick up a wicket himself, Phil Jackon LBW. Another successful LBW appeal against Currill gave Probert his third wicket and Bristol a much-needed win.